


All Along the Watchtower

by 50shadesofsubtext



Series: SPN AU and Trope Bingo [15]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Dark, Depression, Detective Dean Winchester, Detective Sam Winchester, M/M, Mafia AU, Mute/deaf au, Muteness, Prisoner Gabriel, SPN AU & Trope Bingo, SPN Angst Bingo 2018, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Torture, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-11
Updated: 2018-02-11
Packaged: 2019-03-16 23:04:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13646295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/50shadesofsubtext/pseuds/50shadesofsubtext
Summary: Gabriel is held prisoner for years before he is rescued by a tall, shaggy-haired police detective.My fill for the SPN AU and Trope Bingo for the square mute/deaf!au.My fill for the SPN Angst Bingo for the square mafia!au





	All Along the Watchtower

**Author's Note:**

> So many thank yous to my beta, @saltnhalo! Check her out on Tumblr and AO3! 
> 
> The title is from the Jimi Hendrix song of the same name.

Gabriel spent years in the grungy prison cell. At first, they beat him, demanding answers, torturing him with bamboo under his fingernails, starvation, dunking. They got more creative when he didn’t give up — they branded him, pulled off fingernails, even tried foot roasting a couple of times. Gabriel wondered more than once if he was just their cheap entertainment.

He didn’t give up any information though. The one lesson he knew, the first thing he remembered learning, was to protect his family over anything. Even over his own life.

He didn’t know who his brothers pissed off enough to not only capture him but torture him. He held out hope that, somewhere out there, they wouldn’t forget about him, that they might still be looking, that one day they would find him in this back corner of nowhere.

Sometime in the last few years, they stopped the worst of the torture. They stopped asking him questions. They sewed his mouth up, so they didn’t have to listen to him, and they only interacted when they brought him food.

After so many years, his hope was dwindling. Some days, he cursed the family business because being born to the two biggest mobsters in Chicago sucked sometimes. Most of the time, though, he sat quietly and plotted out his revenge against the ones who captured him. He had a pretty good idea of who it was, and he liked to picture all the designs he could make with the men’s guts.

Gabriel didn’t have much concept of time outside when he ate, so he didn’t know long how long he’d been there when they broke in. It started with a sound, a gunshot from across the huge building. He didn’t want to get his hopes up, but the image of his brothers wrecking the whole building to find him flooded his mind anyway.

There were more gunshots from a distance, but the noises moved closer and closer. And then, the gunshots stopped. Gabriel wondered if everyone outside was dead, and he nearly regretted that he couldn’t do the job himself. There were voices outside of the cell, down the long hallway, but Gabriel didn’t recognize them. This was his chance.

He tried to make noise, to scream, to tell someone he was here in this back corner of his prison, but no sound escaped his throat. He rammed himself against the door, trying his hardest to let someone know where he was, for someone to find him. After what felt like forever, he finally heard a voice, “Do you hear that?”

He pounded his hands on the door, made as much noise as he could until the voice was in the hallway, “Hello? Who’s there?”

It wasn’t his brothers. A tall, shaggy-haired man carrying a gun appeared in his vision, dressed in a police uniform, a matching dirty-blond haired man behind him. He stopped moving as they locked eyes through the slats on the cell door and the brunette policeman knocked the lock off the door with his gun.

“Fuck.” His voice was quiet with shock, and he reached out like Gabriel was going to collapse. He had no idea what he looked like, but if Brunette’s face was anything to go by, it wasn’t good.

“We need to get an ambulance here, now!” the brunette yelled to his partner over his shoulder. The officer grabbed him bridal style as his partner called for medical assistance on his radio. God, if his brothers could see him getting carried out of his prison by police, they would never let him forget.

“I’m Detective Winchester, Sam, just call me Sam,” Brunette said as he carried him down the hallway and out of the building. He winced as he looked at Gabriel's face, and Gabe could only imagine how terrible he looked with his lips locked together. “I’m gonna take care of you,” Sam told him.

Gabriel didn’t fight as Sam carried him outside and wrapped him in a blanket from his squad car while they waited for an ambulance. It looked like the few people who’d been holding him captive were already dead or in cuffs and headed to the station, and nearly everyone had already left. There were plenty of cop cars left, though, and Sam let him sit in his while they waited.  Sam must not have been in the mood for asking questions because he just sat beside him and told him he would be okay.

Sam stayed with him while the paramedics loaded him into the ambulance. They said he was malnourished, that his mouth was infected. Gabriel had no doubts as to why. They had cut open the strings to let him eat every day and re-sewed them when he finished, not caring about things like hygiene or if they made it into the same holes they used before. His entire mouth was scar tissue and holes big enough to see his teeth.

He almost laughed when one of the paramedics realized his leg had been broken years ago and never healed right. That had happened when Gabriel badmouthed one of his captors to the point where he kicked Gabriel’s leg out at the knee. That was also when they started sewing his mouth shut — not that he would have talked again after that.

He recognized a few of the doctors in the hospital from the time Michael was shot in the shoulder. They knew his family, they knew him, and he hoped they recognized him so they could help him escape before Sam came back to question him. He was not ready to talk to a cop, even if Sam had a nice smile.

Cops didn’t take well to mobsters.

He wasn’t so lucky. It was hours before he saw Sam again, and at least Sam didn’t know who he was, but that just meant Sam had a million questions about why he was captured, who he was, and what happened to him.

He opened his mouth to tell Sam thanks for the help, but he wasn’t going to talk — except no noise came out.

He tried again, pushed air out his lungs, but he couldn’t make a noise. He hadn’t really felt panicked about his situation until he found he couldn’t talk. Before he was captured, he could always talk his way out of a problem, any problem, but now what option did he have? Sam gave him a questioning look when he moved his mouth, “Are you okay?”

No, he wasn’t okay. He wasn’t anywhere near okay. He couldn’t talk. He realized he hadn’t said anything to the doctors, to his captors, to anyone in years. He hadn’t spoken in years.

He made a writing motion with his hands, and Sam handed him a pad of paper and a pen. At this point, he couldn’t care less if Sam knew who he was, who his family was. He was almost disappointed he couldn’t use the sassy responses he had planned for this.

“ _ Gabriel Milton, _ ” he wrote. Sam watched over and raised his eyebrows at the name. At least Sam knew his family. “ _ Yeah, those Miltons. _ ”

“Gabriel... I know you! You went missing before…” Sam trailed off, and Gabriel stared at him wide-eyed wondering if he was going to finish that sentence. They were interrupted by Dirty-blond walking into the room, and Sam turned to face his partner. “Dean, we gotta talk.”

Gabriel raised his hand to start writing, but Sam smiled at him and told him to give them just a second as he pulled Dean into the hallway. Some shit must have gone down in the last few years, shit Sam didn’t want to tell him. Gabriel could barely see Sam’s back, but from the way he moved, he was talking animatedly.

It was a few minutes before Sam ran his fingers through his hair and turned back to the room. Dean didn’t follow him. Sam motioned to the end of the bed in question, and Gabriel nodded that he could sit. “Alright, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but I have some bad news for you.” He waited until Gabriel nodded. “You know the people that took you, the Hell’s Demons?” Gabriel closed his eyes. It was their biggest rivals, the ones that ran the south side. He had suspected it was them, but it made him more angry knowing the truth.

Sam had stopped talking, and Gabriel realized he was waiting for agreement. He nodded, and Sam continued, “Almost four years ago, they broke into your family’s house. They… they killed everyone.”

Gabe stared at him confused. That couldn’t be right. His family, dead. No, they would have killed him too. “ _ Everyone? _ ”

“One of your brothers, Cas, wasn’t. He’s the one that found everyone.”

Michael, Luke, Rafe… Mom and Dad. This was some sick joke. He couldn’t breathe. His family was gone. And Cas? He was the baby. Gabriel wondered what he was doing out. Was he making a drug run? Was Cas looking for him?

“ _ Do you know where _ _ — _ ”

Sam laid a hand on him to stop him and damn, the guy had huge hands. It helped ground him. “When your family… afterward, Cas worked with us to get some justice.”

“ _ Revenge, _ ” Gabriel wrote, and Sam nodded.

“He started working for the department a couple of years ago. The leads on the Demons started drying up, but Cas knew you were out there somewhere. He kept looking. This was their last little holdout in the city.”

It sounded like his little brother, always hopeful there was a better life out there somewhere, but fiercely protective of his family. “ _ He okay? _ ”

Sam huffed out a laugh, “You won’t believe this, but he’s dating my brother.”

Gabriel  _ couldn’t _ believe it, and he stared at Sam to tell him so. Sam laughed a little, “Dean, that’s my brother, he just went to call him. Cas should be here soon.”

Gabriel just closed his eyes and took a breath. “You should get some sleep; you’re gonna need it,” Sam told him.

“ _ Wake me up _ ,” Gabriel wrote before closing his eyes again. He didn’t sleep, he couldn’t, but after he heard Sam shut the door behind him, tears welled up in his eyes. Michael, Luke, Rafe, Mom, and Dad. That was why they didn’t find him. That was why the Demons stopped torturing him and left him alone. Why didn’t they just kill him?

He could feel when Cas entered the room before he opened his eyes. There were awkward, quiet steps and then he heard the voice, low and scratchy, “Gabriel.” It was said on an exhale, incredulousness and hope in his voice. He opened an eye and saw his baby brother wearing a police uniform.

“ _ If Mom could see you now, _ ” he wrote. Cas moved forward to look at the notepad, and Gabriel saw Sam and Dean behind him.

“She’d never believe you,” Cas said back, a hint of a smile on his lips.

Gabriel smiled a half smile, but his mouth hurt, and he let it drop. “ _ You went legit. _ ”

Cas nodded and sat on the chair next to his bed. “I didn’t have much choice...” his voice trailed off before he added in a quiet voice, “I knew you were out there.”

Gabriel resisted reaching out for Cas and turned his head away. Dean was watching Cas, but Sam watching him. “ _ When am I getting out of here?” _

He wrote it for Cas, but Sam answered, “They want to keep you a couple of days.”

“ _ Then what? _ ”

“We have a spare room,” Cas said and let no room for negotiation.

Gabriel tried piercing his lips together, “ _ Cops? _ ”

“You’ll learn to deal with it,” Cas said with a laugh in his voice, and Gabriel sighed and looked away. He wasn’t really in a position to argue.

A nurse came in then and told them to let Gabriel rest. They came back every day, Cas and Sam more than Dean, but by the time he was released, he was starting to feel more comfortable around the men.

The house they shared was a big place, and Gabriel wondered if Cas bought it with the dirty money their parents had saved. Cas and Dean shared the master suite, a huge room overlooking the city. His room was down the hall right across from Sam’s.

It took a while before Gabriel was comfortable there. Cas and Sam helped him the most. Cas sat with him for hours and told him about his life, and they reminisced about their brothers and family.

Sam insisted on teaching him sign language, something the younger man learned in college on a whim, and once they realized they couldn’t hold off their attraction toward each other, Sam taught him that his mouth had more uses than just talking.

Gabriel had the feeling Dean was just hoping he wouldn’t steal anything and leave in the middle of the night, that he only put up with Gabriel for Cas and Sam’s benefit.

Gabriel had no idea what to do with his free time. Sam and Cas told him to take it slow, to focus on healing. Most of the time, he laid in bed and thought about his family, thought about Cas working his way through the city to find him. Was he worth it? He’d never done anything to deserve Cas’ devotion. He definitely didn’t deserve  _ Sam’s _ devotion.

He surprised himself when he realized he was depressed only after being saved from his prison. Before, while he was captured, he held out hope that his family would find him and that he would get revenge. But his revenge was already done, Cas already killed everyone that hurt him. And his family, the ones that he lived in the hope of seeing again, they were dead. He didn’t have a purpose anymore.

He spent a long time in and out of hospitals with surgeries on his knee, plastic surgery on his face, and even a stint in a psych ward under suicide watch. Sam and Cas stayed, dutifully, by his side, drove him wherever he needed to go and visited him whenever they could.

It was Dean that got to him, though. It was barely a week after his stay in the psych ward when he walked in on Dean making breakfast in the kitchen. Dean told him to sit down when he saw him and pointed at a chair at the table. Gabriel sat his crutches next to him, leaning against the counter, and swung his leg around to fit under the table.

“You know,” Dean told him as he flipped a pancake, “Cas full-on ransacked the city looking for you.”

Gabriel looked at the table, not expecting or ready for this conversation. Dean continued, not even looking at Gabriel to see if he was listening, “I’ve never seen him as worried or happy as when he found you. He was never really whole until he knew what happened to you. I’d spent years telling him you were probably dead, that he should move on with his life.”

Gabriel would have done the same thing. If he knew Cas was out there looking for him, he would have told the kid to stop, that he wasn’t worth the effort.

“And then, you got Sammy all caught-up in you. He was worried if you were gonna make it out of the hospital the first time, but then you had to go and try and off yourself.” He turned to look at Gabriel now, fury in his eyes. “You may have been some mobster dickbag, Gabriel, but you mean something to them. And you don’t get to hurt them like that. Life sucks, and then we move on. So move on. We can help you do just about anything you want. We can help you start over. But you don’t have the option to hurt them like that. I won’t let you.”

Dean glared at Gabriel as if he were waiting for an answer, and Gabriel knew he must look shell-shocked. He knew he must have hurt Cas and Sam, but somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew they would be better off without the stress he put on them. But here was Dean, the one who hated him, telling him that they needed him. He nodded slowly and then raised his hands. “ _ Do you hate me? _ ” he signed.

Dean wasn’t as proficient in sign as Sam or Cas, but from the look on his face, he knew what Gabriel asked. “How could I?” Dean asked, “You’re family.”

Things started to get better after that. Gabriel tried to get better after that. The three men pulled some strings and found Gabriel a job in narcotics, a desk job, so he wasn’t just stuck at the house alone all the time. Gabriel nearly laughed at the idea of working for the police, but after a few weeks on the job, he couldn’t deny that it felt right. With Sam and Cas and Dean always around, he never felt alone there.

He still woke up in the middle of the night in cold sweats sometimes. He still felt his mouth close in pouted lips like they were stitched together. He still woke up with wordless screams for his big brothers, for his parents. Sam held him those dark nights, covering him in a way that didn’t trap him, and ran his fingers through Gabriel’s hair.

He wasn’t sure if he would ever be okay, but wrapped in Sam’s arms and with his brother down the hall, he could keep going.


End file.
